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How Electric Motors Can Benefit From Vibrational Analysis

How Electric Motors Can Benefit From Vibrational Analysis

Vibration analysis is a useful tool that helps to save time and money on electric motor repairs. It is a means to regularly monitor a motor’s condition and detect any potential issues developing within and address them before they develop into bigger problems. This allows for timely maintenance and repairs, reduced changes of complete breakdowns and, ultimately, costly downtimes.

The basics of electric motor vibration analysis include key factors focusing on frequency, amplitude, and intensity linked to various phenomena within the engine. This is how the analysis data can generate insights into a motor’s health and whether it remains in good working order.

A quick overview of vibration analysis

As mentioned, vibration analysis helps keep motors running smoothly by identifying and eliminating unwanted vibrations that could result in a motor’s degraded performance, efficiency, and lifespan. A common use case for this analysis is monitoring a motor’s bearings, which are typically subject to high friction when a motor is in operation. The friction causes heat to build up and, in turn, leads to the expansion and contraction of the metal parts within. The unevenness of this phenomenon displaces the parts from their initial position and causes vibrations at low and high speeds.

What is measured by vibration analysis?

Vibration measurement is a means of identifying and monitoring faults in machinery and is used across various industries like manufacturing, automotive, aerospace, and more. The following are some of the typical failures that vibration analysis can detect.

Imbalance

Imbalance can be caused by any number of causes, a few of which include:

  • Incorrect balancing procedure in the workshop
  • Use of out-of-spec keyways
  • Deformed rotor from high temperatures
  • Wrong selection of balancing quality grade

Misalignments

Some common issues resulting in misalignments are thermal expansion, incorrect alignment procedure, weak support base, and wrong calculations of alignment standards or tolerances, to name a few.

Rotating looseness

Rotating looseness or clearances can stem from wear on the bearings or housing or bad adjustment of parts, which can be resolved with dimensional checks on these components.

Structural issues

Looseness and defects of anchor bolts, bolts, and screws, as well as a weak or damaged base caused by corrosion or the main structural issues that can be rooted out by vibration analysis.

Bearing issues

Bearing issues can be caused by many factors, such as bad assembly, poor or contaminated lubricant, failures in the lubrication procedure, ground wiring failures, and more.

Eccentricity

Eccentricity is commonly associated with deformed or worn-out rotors, worn-out bearings or their housing, and misalignment between housings.

How to leverage vibration analysis in your electric motors

Vibrations are defined as the oscillation of an object about its position of rest. It is a factor that is too often overlooked in electric motors, even though neglecting them can lead to many significant issues, such as unfavourable performance output and decreased lifespan. As such, it is recommended to leverage vibration analysis to minimise the downtime of your equipment and extend its lifespan, allowing for reduced costs in maintaining motor uptime via repairs and replacements.

In short, vibration analysis for electric motors lends to the following benefits:

  • Reduced equipment downtime
  • Reduced maintenance costs
  • Lower repair costs
  • Increased motor lifespan

Conclusion

If left unchecked, vibrations can spell disaster to the performance and lifespan of electric motors by causing a number of issues ranging from bearing failure due to indentations on its raceways to loosened windings and more. As such, to preserve the integrity and efficiency of your motors, it is best to engage with service providers dealing in mechanical and electrical engineering in Singapore that can rectify motor vibration issues and conduct other key maintenance processes like electric motor rewinds.